Gossip Girl ad sparks outrage

A controversial print advertisement for the second season of Gossip Girl.

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A TV ad featuring a sexual threesome on an upcoming episode of Gossip Girl has angered the American Parents Television Council.

Airing the teen tryst, which is being teased in an ad as a "3SOME," is "reckless and irresponsible," said PTC president Tim Winter in a statement Wednesday. The threesome involves three main characters in the show but they are not identified in the ads.

The PTC has urged CW affiliate stations not to air the episode, scheduled for November 9.

In a letter to the affiliates, Winter asked: "Will you now be complicit in establishing a precedent and expectation that teenagers should engage in behaviours heretofore associated primarily with adult films?"

This is not the first time the PTC has complained about the sexy prep-school soap, which Winter said is "expressly targeted to impressionable teenagers."

In July 2008, the organisation spoke out against a racy marketing campaign for its new season. Ads showed intimate moments between the show's characters (on a couch, in the sack or apparently skinny-dipping), accompanied by headlines like "A Nasty Piece of Work" and "Mind-Blowingly Inappropriate."

"CW has been defending graphic content on Gossip Girl by asserting that they don't target teenagers," Winters said Wednesday. "Such a claim doesn't even pass the 'laugh test.'"

CW spokesman Paul McGuire said the target audience for Gossip Girl is 18- to 34-year-old women, with a median viewer age of 27 years old. The network had no comment on PTC's complaint, he said.

The Parents Television Council describes itself as a non-partisan education group advocating responsible entertainment.